Paris Auctions: Vibrant Market for 19th-Century, Old Master Drawings

Three sales held by Sotheby’s, Christie’s and ArtCurial that coincided with the city’s prestigious Old Master drawing fair, the Salon du Dessin, pointed to a lively and vibrant market for Old Master through modern drawings. Ketty Gottardo, director of the department of Old Master and 19th-century drawings at Christie’s France, said: “Old Master and 19th-century

PARIS—Three sales held by Sotheby’s, Christie’s and ArtCurial that coincided with the city’s prestigious Old Master drawing fair, the Salon du Dessin, pointed to a lively and vibrant market for Old Master through modern drawings. Ketty Gottardo, director of the department of Old Master and 19th-century drawings at Christie’s France, said: “Old Master and 19th-century drawings once again inspired vivid interest in international collectors, who expressed a particular taste for masterpieces from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as drawings by Claude Lorrain.”

Demand for the works was robust; of the 189 lots offered, the auction was 98 percent sold by value and 97.9 percent sold by lot. The overall total for the sale was €4.5 million

A record was set for the top lot of the sale, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, a rare work dated 1913 by Sonia Delaunay, in collaboration with Blaise Cendrars, and featuring a mosaic binding by Paul Bonet. It sold for €312,750 ($418,234), well above the estimate of €40,000/60,000.

The second-highest lot was Joan Miró’s collaboration with Paul Eluard. A toute épreuve, 1958, which brought together 80 original colored woodcuts by Miró and a patterned binding fashioned from mosaics of different types of rare wood. It sold for €228,750 ($305,903), compared with an estimate of €40,000/60,000. And Matisse’s album of 34 preparatory drawings and sketches, 1930, sold for €105,750 ($140,615), against an estimate of €50,000/70,000.

Several works by Picasso were among the sale’s top-selling lots, including a version of Honoré de Balzac’s Le Chef d’Oeuvre inconnu, 1931, accompanied by 13 Picasso etchings and an original drawing. It sold for €186,750 ($249,737), surpassing its estimate of €100,000/150,000. The book also contained a handwritten dedication by the artist. The first book illustrated by Picasso, André Salmon’s Poèmes, 1905, one of only 25 copies and featuring a rare proof of his drypoint etching of Les Deux Saltimbanques, sold for €168,750 ($225,666), doubling the low end of its €80,000/120,000 estimate.

Private Collection Pushes Up Prices

On March 28, Artcurial in Paris held a sale of Old Master and 19th-century drawings, many from the collection of Jacques Thuillier, a French art historian who specialized in art from the 17th and 19th centuries. The sale totaled €2 million ($2.7 million), clearing the estimate of €1 million/1.5 million. More than 70 percent of the 238 lots offered found buyers.

The two top lots were 19th-century works, including Victor Hugo’s Souvenir de Belgique, 1857, a small-format, brown-ink cityscape with a large spot of blue watercolor in the sky. The work sold for €447,547 ($597,269), compared with an estimate of €100,000/150,000, and set a record for a drawing by the artist. The other, Eugene Delacroix’s 16-page album of drawings, including a study inspired by Géricault’s Radeau de la Méduse, self-portraits and sketches for Delacroix’s canvas Le Massacre de Scio. The album sold for €311,235 ($415,356), several times its estimate of €40,000/60,000.

Other drawings that sold well included L’avocat, a work in watercolor and gouache by Honoré Daumier, which sold within the €80,000/120,000 estimate for €100,571 ($134,216), and The Presentation in the Temple, by Michel Corneille the Younger, a brown wash drawing heightened with white pencil, which sold for €75 787 ($101,141), surpassing the estimate of €10,000/15,000.

Christie’s Paris held its drawing sale on March 29. Of the 215 lots offered, 158 sold, representing 73 percent by lot and 96 percent by value. The auction yielded €2.95 million ($3.9 million).

The top lot of the sale, Claude Lorrain’s recto-verso drawing, a landscape with a farm in the mountains on one side and a study on the other, sold for €445,000 ($593,408), nearly ten times its low estimate of €50,000/70,000. Another recto-verso drawing by Lorrain, a figure study on one side and boats on the other, executed between 1635 and 1640, sold for €277,000 ($363,380), against an estimate of €60,000/80,000.

An album by Count Edward Raczynski, a Polish diplomat who became Poland’s president, sold for €313,000 ($417,386) on an estimate of €60,000/80,000. Two large drawings by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo from his “Illustrated Bible” series, La vocation des fils de Zébédéé (Matthew 4:21–22), fetched €181,000 ($241,364) on a €100,000/150,000 estimate. Another Tiepolo, L’Agonie du Christ à Gethsémani (Luc 22:43), with the same estimate, sold for €139,000 ($185,357).

And a study of a sleeping woman by François Boucher, Etude de jeune femme endormie, more than doubled its low estimate of €60,000/80,000, selling for €151,000 ($201,359).